Scale down Kosovo peacekeeping force, says British commander

The commander of British peacekeeping troops in Kosovo today said the force could be scaled down without jeopardising its mission.

Brigadier David Rutherford-Jones, who leads an international K-For brigade based in Pristina, insisted that no decision had yet been made about reducing numbers of troops.

However, the Light Dragoons brigadier said it was his ‘‘professional soldier’s opinion’’ that reducing troop numbers would not allow for a further eruption of violence between ethnic Serbs and Albanians.

The region’s ethnic Serb minority is currently protected by peacekeeping troops, including soldiers from the Queen’s Royal Hussars and The Royal Regiment of Wales.

They are subject to regular stone-throwing and intimidation by ethnic Albanians but the executions and mob lynchings seen after the Nato ousting of Yugoslavia’s former president Slobodan Milosevic are now infrequent.

Brig Rutherford-Jones told a press conference of international journalists in Pristina that K-For’s task in the region had become more about supporting the United Nations and Kosovo police than direct intervention.

He said: ‘‘The situation we find ourselves in today in Kosovo is quite different to the situation we found when we came here.

‘‘It is quite appropriate for Nato and K-For to review the mission here to make sure we have the right troops to do the job in the future.

‘‘It is not my decision to reduce numbers but my personal feeling from a professional soldier’s point of view is that we can make reductions and still do the same job that we are doing now.

‘‘Nations like my own have huge responsibilities across the world and we don’t have a bottomless pit of soldiers so it is not about reducing our effectiveness, it is just making sure that those soldiers we are using are genuinely needed for the job.

‘‘I’m not in the business of keeping soldiers in Kosovo, or anywhere else in the world who don’t have a full job of work to do.

‘‘We can’t afford that and apart from anything else they have all got families back home that they don’t see enough of at the moment.

‘‘The sort of incidents of violence and criminality we are witnessing here are the sort people are dealing with anywhere else in the world.

‘‘The police need to take the lead, and indeed they are, but we are here to continue to help provide security and assist them in their policing.’’

K-For troops first entered Kosovo in June 1999 and the last Serb forces left the region eight days later.

Both ethnic Serbs and Albanians from Kosovo committed revenge killings during the Balkans conflict.